“And I’ll order you food. Whatever you want. And by that I mean whatever you want as long as it’s sushi or Chinese. Ritchie can stop by later, too, if you want.”
I put my head on her shoulder. “Thanks for being so, I don’t know—normal about this.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“What, did people just talk about abortions when you were growing up? Did you get a manual on how to deal with them sensitively?” I was kidding, but part of me wondered.
Dana shrugged. “Well, it’s not like anyone wanted to have to have one. But you’re not the first person I know who has or anything.”
“I don’t want to tell anyone about it,” I told her, repeating what I had said to her a million times before the procedure. “But I think I just mean not yet. I actually might want to be open about it. Someday soon. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” she said, as we pulled up in front of her building. Oliver the doorman came out to open the car door for us. “Oliver, you’re such a gentleman,” she flirted.
“You have the best building. You’re, like, a real grown-up.” I gave her a playful shove as we walked up to the door.
“Nah,” she said, throwing her arm around me and pulling me close for a brief hug. “You are.”
* * *
• • •
Alan called at eight that night. I was already asleep, curled up under piles of blankets on the left side of Dana’s bed, but even groggily seeing his name on my caller ID made me happy.
“Are you okay?” he asked without saying hello.
“Everyone keeps asking that like I’m going to die or something. It’s a completely routine procedure.” I didn’t want to say that it wasn’t a big deal, because it was a big deal—for some people, in some circumstances. Somehow, though, the truth was that the fact of it actually hadn’t been a big deal for me. Or, at least, not for the reasons anyone would suspect.
“So . . . ?”
“Yes, I’m okay. Dana’s taking care of me. It’s amazing, actually—I’ve never seen her so maternal. Ironic, right?” Dana threw a pillow at me.
“She used one of her precious vacation days on you?” Alan snorted. “Kidding. I’m glad you’re okay. I’m glad Dana’s there with you.”
He filled me in on the day’s office drama, and we had a normal conversation that was boring in the good way. How did I feel? I wondered. Dazed, happy, confused, exhausted. All those things. Most of all, I kept experiencing this profound sense of relief.
A small part of me wanted Michelle to call, too. Just because I wanted the chance to hang up on her—though, at the same time, I wanted her to take care of me like she had done once when I had a horrible stomach flu while visiting her at college. I had been a complete mess in front of her, and she had loved me anyway. I wanted to ask her where that love had gone.
“Do you care if I go back to sleep?” I finally mumbled to Dana. The luxury of a whole Saturday stretching ahead of us made sleep sound even more enticing.
“Do you care if I keep rewatching Parks and Rec?”
“Nope,” I said. “I can sleep through anything.”
It did take me a while to relax, though. I had a mental loop going, in which I replayed every major decision I had ever made that had led me to this exact moment, tossing and turning in someone else’s bed on the strangest day of my life. It occurred to me that I had been wandering through the past few years like they were a maze; I knew there was an exit somewhere, but in some unknown location. Meanwhile, it seemed like everyone I had grown up with had built some kind of traditional adult life. Houses, marriage, children. Retirement accounts. Graduate degrees. Which of them had found everything they really wanted, I wondered, and which of them had been content to just settle down and stop looking? Or maybe they didn’t see it that way. The whole mess of life is just simpler to some people, I decided. I envied that.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I didn’t make a move for what I really wanted—finally moving into my own apartment, working on something that really mattered to me—I never would. It was time to start over, one more time.
* * *
• • •
I spent all Saturday scribbling notes. If I wanted to write for real, and I was pretty sure that I did, I had to start somewhere. I also needed to figure out a lot of things. Crashing with Dana and avoiding both my roommates and the process of finding a new apartment was not exactly a life plan.
So I sat on the living room floor making lists, and Dana sat in the club chair across the room, ostensibly working on her laptop but secretly just watching me—checking to make sure I wasn’t having an emotional breakdown, probably. I could see her blue eyes peeking above the screen about every five minutes. It reminded me of my mom. When I was a kid, she sometimes used to pretend to read in the park, but she would always be watching me from behind the pages of her latest Danielle Steel to make sure I didn’t do anything too reckless. It had annoyed the hell out of me back then. I never recognized it as a gesture of love until now.
Before we went to bed that night, I told Dana that I had something important to say.
“Are you going to tell me what you’ve been frantically writing all day?” she asked, sitting next to me on my disheveled couch bed.
“Well, first, I’ve decided I definitely want to live by myself when I move out. I’ve been looking at studios and I think I can afford it. If I live in, like, deep Brooklyn, anyway.”
Dana smiled. “That’s amazing, if you’re sure you’re ready. But, I’m buying a place up here,” she said, meaning the Upper West Side.
“We’re going to have to be in an even longer-distance relationship.” I took her hand mock seriously.
“Everyone keeps moving to fucking Brooklyn.”
“It’s even worse than that, actually. I’m going to be writing in Brooklyn.”
I told her the thought I had been having for a long time. The bit about how the only time my mind ever relaxed completely was when I was reading a true account of someone else’s life. How that made me realize I wanted to write, too.
“I’m keeping my job at Thomas Miller, though, obviously. I still love it,” I told her. “But maybe I can do this as some kind of extra freelance work. Solo apartments in New York don’t exactly pay for themselves.”
“So does this mean I’ll be getting my apartment back soon, and I’ll never have to go to Bushwick again?” She leaned over to hug me. “I’m kidding. I’m happy for you.”
“Me, too.”
Dana got up and left the room, but I stayed put.
I thought about a lot of things then, sitting there in the quiet. I thought about what I could possibly create, how I could plant something in the world that wasn’t a person. Maybe writing could be that for me. Or maybe it could just be love. I stared out the window and watched the leaves blow, illuminated under the streetlamps. From Dana’s fifth-floor window, only the highest leaves of the trees were visible. Viewed cropped from my angle, they looked as if they were frozen in midair, borne of nothing, magically suspended as the gleam from the streetlight buoyed them and streamed through them.
This—this day—would be part of my story. It would be part of where I came from, even if it wasn’t visible from every angle.
But I knew then, too, that it wouldn’t be everything. Not even close.
CHAPTER 25
I walked into the office on Monday with nothing but an intense resolve to get back to work. Between beginning my search for a studio apartment in earnest and diving into a new young adult novel Imani had just acquired, there was plenty to keep me busy. As I scrolled, I saw one message in my inbox that shocked me: an e-mail from Michelle. It had been almost a week since our fight and I hadn’t been expecting to hear from her.
It had been impossible to keep our conversation out of my mind, of course. In almost twenty years, Michelle and I had never s
poken to each other like that. We squabbled like sisters when we were young, but even then she always “won,” and we’d make up within the hour anyway. I could never stay mad at her for long.
I thought about what it would have been like to call her from Dana’s the night after the abortion, in some alternate reality where she might have spoken to me with love and concern rather than shock or condescension. But because I had seen the movie Bridesmaids, I thought that all prewedding bridal-party fights ended in a “Don’t even bother coming to my wedding!” I didn’t do anything, waiting instead to be dismissed as maid of honor. Hell, after everything, a part of me wanted to be uninvited. But public spectacles—at least, the bad kind of public spectacles—weren’t really Michelle’s style. I should have known that. When I opened the e-mail, it was simply a group message to all the bridesmaids specifying footwear and jewelry restrictions for the ceremony.
Maybe I had been included by mistake? But no: A follow-up e-mail then came to me separately, suggesting that my gold block heels would look particularly good with the peach-hued bridesmaid dresses. “I know what happened between us,” she concluded. “And this doesn’t change it. But everything is already set for the bridal party and for the reception, and the dresses, and I do hope we can put it aside for this one weekend and that you’ll still be there.”
And I do hope you’ll remove the stick from your ass, I thought at first. The anger didn’t hold. I could e-mail back and tell her I wouldn’t come and end everything just like that, certainly. But the plane ticket had been purchased, the dress altered. The first weekend of our friendship, we had dressed up for a fake wedding. Faking a friendship at her real wedding made a fine bookend to the last two decades. Even more than that, though, if Michelle and I never spoke again in our lives after the wedding, I knew our friendship couldn’t end without ever seeing each other again.
So, it was decided. I sent a conciliatory e-mail, confirming that I would attend. In six weeks, I would be back in Langham. And maybe I could finally say good-bye for the last time.
* * *
• • •
Later that afternoon, Imani called me into her office for our weekly meeting.
I sat down across from her at her desk, noticing her gold earrings. Three inches wide, triangular, and knifepoint sharp at the bottom, they were the sort of thing I wished I had the confidence to wear. Marcia had once told Michelle and me that oversize gold jewelry was “tacky.” When I was younger, Marcia had represented the pinnacle of femininity to me, and I had readily taken her word as law. I wondered about that, and the coded language behind it—it was obvious now that Marcia’s distaste was never for the jewelry but for the wearer. Now I wondered why I had ever listened. I decided I would look for a similar pair that weekend.
“Feeling better?” she asked, not looking up from the stack of papers in front of her.
“I—” I almost forgot that I had called in sick on the day of the procedure with “food poisoning.” “Yes, much better. Thanks.”
We started to compare notes on a manuscript—young adult contemporary, we both loved it—and I thought about how much I admired Imani’s insight. She never said “um,” never punctuated her opinions with a question mark at the end. I had told her this before, once or twice over the years, and she had thanked me sincerely. But for some reason, I was still afraid of gushing too much, of being too effusive. Imani never seemed like someone who had a lot of time for personal declarations at work. Which was why her next question surprised me.
“You’re out of the office for your friend’s wedding this month, right?”
“In March. But yes, soon.”
She eyed me levelly. “How is the planning going? You don’t get to be my age without being a bridesmaid quite a few times and . . . whew. Sometimes it’s better than others.” Imani was thirty-seven, one of the many personal facts I’d learned from being her assistant. It can be a strangely intimate job.
“Well, let’s just say it’s been . . . expensive,” I ventured, and we both laughed harder than I expected, Imani flashing both rows of perfectly white teeth.
“I hear that.” A beat. “Well, anything else for today that’s on your mind?”
My abortion? A friendship falling apart? Was this an entry point to talking candidly about Michelle, or would Imani have more respect for discretion? Then I remembered a safer topic: the salary letter.
“Well, actually,” I said. “I’m applying for apartments on my own for the first time, and I need a salary letter with my updated compensation. Can I get that from you, or Howard?” I had been stunned at how easily I’d gotten my raise, which, while not hugely impressive, was still more money than I’d thought it would be. It made me a little mad that I hadn’t stood up for myself sooner.
“I’ll have it for you tomorrow. You’re moving to live by yourself, then?”
“I am.” I shifted in my chair. “I’m excited, but a little . . . nervous.”
Imani smiled and shook her head, in an affectionate kind of disbelief. “Well, I’m just impressed. It’s difficult in publishing, especially when you’re on your own. I would know. It took me almost ten years.”
Imani lived in Park Slope, a Brooklyn enclave full of families and successful writers, far out of my budget. But it made me feel better to know that it hadn’t happened for her right away. As silly as it seemed, I always imagined Imani springing forth from Wellesley at age twenty-two in a jewel-toned sheath dress with an editor title and keys to a brownstone.
“Well, I’ve done some freelance editing work on the side,” I admitted, hoping that was okay with the company. “Editing for a professor at Columbia, fixing résumés, that kind of stuff. Boring, mostly. But it helps.”
Imani nodded approvingly. “You’re a hustler. But that’s why I hired you. Takes one to know one.”
“I know you started at a literary agency,” I said. Feeling emboldened by her compliment, I went on. I glanced at her bare ring finger. “But how did you really do it? I see . . . I see a lot of people who aren’t sure they can make it in this industry, not by themselves.”
I had said nothing about marriage and nothing about family, but she seemed to intuit my meaning. She leaned toward me just a little, placing an elbow on her desk and resting her chin on her palm. “Well, to be honest, I did it by working three nights a week as a bartender for the first three years of my career. Roommates, ramen noodles, you’ve heard it.” She shrugged. “This push for acquiring diverse books, for diversity in publishing—and the effort is still halfhearted sometimes, but, you know—that just didn’t really exist fifteen years ago. Sometimes I wondered why I even wanted it so much. But I did. I read so much as a teenager, and I just knew I wanted to help bring stories into the world.”
I knew the broad-strokes outline of Imani’s career trajectory, but she had never shared the personal aspects behind it. I stayed still, hoping she would continue.
“My parents would call all the time back then, panicked, especially my mom. The industry was so foreign to her, but mostly it was just that they were more traditional. She asked for a long time if I would move back in at home, if they could introduce me to someone ‘suitable.’” I knew Imani’s parents were Nigerian, though she had been raised in New Jersey. “My matrimonial status continues to be . . . somewhat of a talking point across the extended family. The world I live in now is very different from the one I grew up in.” She raised her eyebrows. “I imagine you might know a little something about that.”
A warm feeling bubbled up inside me, and I couldn’t describe it exactly except to say that it felt like recognition. Like hearing a familiar voice at a crowded party where you thought you didn’t know anyone. I couldn’t imagine exactly what the particular struggles of Imani’s life had been like, and how different they had been from mine, but I knew that, in a way, she had stood very near to where I was now standing.
“I do.” I smiled. “
Most of the women I went to high school with are married, actually. Having kids, too.”
“Something I always assumed I would have done by now.” She had turned her head slightly, and she stared past me out the window. “But life . . . unfolded differently. And to be honest, I am glad it did.” She smiled and shook her head. “Anyway, all this is to say that I’m proud of where I am now. Proud to say that I kept at it in this industry, and that I took the unglamorous opportunities, the side hustles, dealt with the disparaging comments. But here’s the thing: The ‘big cost’ isn’t the grunt work. It’s the thought of all the lives you could have lived instead. All the things that were expected of you, all the paths that might have been harder, or easier, but certainly would have been safer.” She paused. “But the less afraid you become of those ghosts, the more the rest of your life comes alive. That’s what I’ve found to be true, anyway.”
I stared at her, awed. I was afraid to do anything to disturb the pocket of quiet intimacy that had wrapped itself around us. But then Imani shook her head quickly, as if to shake off the moment of vulnerability, and she arranged her features into their usual expression of steely confidence.
“So that’s how you got here.”
“The much-abridged version.” Then Imani stood up, and I followed suit. She smoothed the front of her emerald dress and checked her watch. “Anyway, well, that’s time. I’ll have the salary letter on your desk tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Imani,” I said, for far more than just the salary letter, and as I met her eyes one more time I knew that she knew what I meant.
CHAPTER 26
The sun came up at 6:42 on the day before Michelle’s wedding. I knew because I had been up since four, lying motionless on the futon in the living room of the house I grew up in. From the moment I stepped off the plane, I had been rethinking my decision to fly all the way to Alabama for “closure.” How could I still stand up in front of Michelle’s entire family and give a toast? How would Michelle look at me when I finally saw her? It felt like her anger might really have the power to turn me to stone.
Friends from Home Page 19
